Rhythmic thumping echoed through the empty kitchen, near imperceivable if a bystander wasn’t specifically listening for it. It was a light sound emanating from the coldest depths of the freezer, carrying the full brunt of pent-up energy and stress of one month of captivity. Although she wasn’t formally a prisoner, Terra knew that she was no guest of these people.

She twisted her hips and drove another punch into the hanging sandbag, sending it swinging around like a deranged pendulum. Pretending this was an opponent, she dodged invisible arms and legs as she danced around the bag, landing as many hits as she could before she had to move out of the way as it swung past. Once she was panting and covered in a thin sheet of sweat she steadied the bag and peaked out into the kitchen to check the ticker on the wall. According to that, it was too late to be awake and too early to be up.

Truth be told, Terra was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go back to that small room with the two others and collapse onto her mattress. As tempted as she was, she went back into the freezer and continued her merciless pummeling of the sandbag. If her eyelids threatened to droop, she’d change up her rhythm. If she stumbled, she’d start doing push-ups. Her muscles screamed for rest but she knew what was waiting for her if she succumbed to sleep. Eventually, her body refused to listen to her commands and her knees gave out. That was the second time that night.

Calming her sporadic breathing, she quickly put her coat back on to prevent the negative degree temperature freezing the sweat on her body. She’d collapsed out of exhaustion a week ago and nearly suffered frostbite; she’d learned her lesson. While her limbs recovered she’d practice manipulating the black crystals.

She focused as she let the crystals slither down into her palms, forming a writhing mass of opaque rock. Often times she got so mesmerized by its natural movement that hours would pass without her realizing it. As it turned out, it could move without her commands, and she didn’t know what to make of it. Could it be alive? Or maybe her idle mind was controlling the crystals so it looked like it had a will of its own when in reality it was actually her subconscious.

Breaking out of her trance, she attempted to form a gun in her hands. As much as she hated firearms, her enemies had no quarrel with using the weapon so she figured she should at least give it a try. So far, she’d gotten it to look exactly like what she’d been aiming for using it was a completely different issue. Because she didn’t know what a gun’s interior looked like, she couldn’t get it to actually shoot projectiles. Granted, she could still create a bullet-formed crystal and mentally fling at her enemy, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the amount of force an actual bullet had. A bitter taste filled her mouth and she quickly changed the gun to her most familiar weapon; a crowbar. It seemed like she still couldn’t stomach the thought of holding the same genre of weapon that had killed Roger those many years ago. Even now it still hurt--she wished that time would have healed her wounds instead of letting the scar tissue pile up until she grew numb. Numbness wasn’t the same as healing.

With her crowbar in one hand, she swung it around a few times. After a few swings, she transformed it mid-swing into a sword. After a few swings of that weapon, she quickly lengthened the crystal so the blade of the sword was at the end of a long pole. Minutes later, she added another blade to the end of the pole, practicing her use of such a long weapon and paying careful attention to her hands and feet. Often times when it came to her twin-bladed spear she’d cut up the fabric on her legs because she wasn’t paying attention to where the swords were. Once she was satisfied that she’d kept her clothing intact, she split the weapon in half so both hands had a short spear. She continued practicing her swings, enjoying the song the crystals made when they swung through the crisp air, changing her weapons into anything else she could think of. The tricky part was changing them independently from each other as it took much more concentration to keep the two sides in separate formations.

The crystals were stubborn and fought her whenever she attempted to have a sword in one hand and a crowbar in the other, but having a sickle in one hand with an attached chain in the other was fine. In other words, the crystals would remain in form if it was a single item, but if it was two separate items one of those items would turn into the other if Terra didn’t focus on retaining the form. She tried to create a loophole and attach her sword and crowbar together with a chain, but apparently, the crystals knew that wasn’t a real thing and she ended up with two crowbars attached by a chain.

The crystals also didn’t like it when she stretched them more than arm’s length. She learned this quite painfully when she attempted to create a shield that would cover a hypothetical partner at her side when the crystals suddenly snapped back like a rubber band and hit her in the face, leading to a bloody nose and a partial black eye. In order to properly create a shield that wouldn’t spontaneously cause her harm, she had to clutch her hands together and stretch the crystals to their max, creating a thin shield of crystals five by five feet in diameter. If she crouched, she could create a dome over her body, though that wouldn’t help much if she were in the throughs of battle.

Satisfied in her practice she got up and left the freezer, seeing that three hours had passed since she’d last checked the time. There were still two hours to go before anyone else entered the kitchen and her legs were aching from use--a little rest wouldn’t hurt.

She looked back and forth between the freezer and the warm cafeteria. If she sat down in the cafeteria there was a chance she might fall asleep due to its moderate temperature. The freezer was a better bet if she wanted to stay awake, but her fingers were bright red and burning from the cold and she’d lost all sensation in her nose and toes long ago. Terra settled on bringing a stool into the walk-in fridge to rest, hoping the chillier temperature would keep her awake.

Massaging her sore limbs she coated the crystals around her hands and kept her brain alert by creating intricate patterns on the back of her makeshift gloves and seeing how long she could keep them in shape before they snapped back into a single object.

To distract her from the heaviness in her eyelids she focused on what she’d be doing in a few hours. Kera was the one that came through the doors first, usually shortly followed by five others. They would prepare the dough and cut up odd chunks of colored bricks they called ‘vegetables,’ though Terra knew what vegetables actually looked like and they weren’t fooling anyone. Terra was put in charge of washing all dishes and any heavy lifting, so she wasn’t really needed until the cooking of breakfast began. She was glad she didn’t actually have to serve anyone since she was bitter about her entire situation, and none of the women around her had any inclination of getting to know the new girl that was always there before anyone else.

Terra did notice that she was the only one ‘training,’ though she didn’t exactly know what she was training for. Kera had been so kind and open during her initiation, but whenever Terra asked the woman about the purpose of training the older woman would change the subject or order her to wash some new dishes. At this point, Terra knew that this ‘training’ she was doing was just to keep her busy and prevent her from escaping. Terra knew that she wanted to get out of this place but she knew what was waiting for her on the surface world. Unless she had a respirator, there was no way she’d be getting far and she had no idea where to get one either since no one in the community wore one. Lately, she’d been so sleep-deprived that she couldn’t think of anything except for how to stay awake for the next few minutes. She just needed to stay awake until she was put to work. As long as she could stay awake, she’d been free from the things that appeared on the backs of her eyelids.

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She just needed to stay awake for a few more minutes…

____________________________________________________________________________

Eimose learned very quickly that no matter how subtly he asked, the scientists in the lab would not tell him anything about how the upper door functioned. Or about what results they saw on the tests they ran. Or literally anything else, including their names. His Medhish vocabulary was incredibly limited so he managed to pick up absolutely nothing during his eleven hours in the lab. There was absolutely no attempt to accommodate his communication deficit until they needed him to raise his arms or turn around or lay down, then they would bring up the translator screen. Instead of keeping it up after he completed a task, they stopped the application and continued their work, leaving Eimose in the dark.

He’d left his gun in his room stuffed in a hole he’d made in his pillow. He noticed that he got incredibly paranoid if he had it on his person, so he decided the best thing to do for the moment was leave it behind until he saw an opportunity. For now, he needed to subtly smuggle food and water from the cafeteria and hide it, steal two backpacks, two respirators, and at least one navigation screen. That was the bare minimum. If he could find a change of clothes other than the jumpsuits everyone wore here that would be a bonus.

That morning he was pleasantly surprised to see a set of grey jumpsuits resting on his bedstand, ones that actually fit his person rather than the dark blue oversized ones he’d been wearing for the past month. Regal also got a new pair of jumpsuits as well, still dark blue, but more fitted as well. Did Terra get a change too? He hoped so since last he saw her he was afraid she’d trip on the excess leg length of her suit. Well, now that he had an extra jumpsuit he’d give it to her when they escaped.

Now that he wasn’t under constant supervision he wondered if it would be too conspicuous to approach her if he saw her in the cafeteria. Would anyone intervene if he did? Would he get confined? Would she get in trouble? He wished he had paper and a pen so he could casually bump into her while slipping her a note. How could he talk to her without anyone noticing?

A jolt of electricity ran down his spine and he involuntarily shuddered. What the hell was that? Since he’d gone through the CT machine that morning he’d been getting strange shivers starting at the base of his skull. Could it just be coincidental? He’d let the lab assistants know in the morning when he went for more testing.

“How was your first day!” Regal exclaimed as he wrapped his arm around Eimose’s shoulder.

“Quiet. Was the Colonel in a bad mood again today?” Eimose responded, trying to shrug Regal’s arm off.

“Surprisingly enough, no. He was probably happy he didn’t have to deal with you and your freakish arm.”

“Wow, you’re so funny.” Eimose droned, rolling his eyes.

“I know, right? That’s what Jer keep--kept telling me.” Regal’s smile fell and he dropped his arm from Eimose’s shoulder.

“How are they doing?” asked Eimose, genuinely concerned.

“Better. The doc says they could wake up today, but they’ve been saying that for the past two weeks so I don’t know. All I know is that Jer is alive according to the monitors, I just wish they’d come back already.”

“Are you sure Jer isn’t trying to stay in a coma to get away from you?” Eimose cracked, hoping he wasn’t overstepping his bounds. It took a second and Eimose felt his face turning red with shame, but Regal broke out in a smile.

“And here I didn’t think you had a sense of humor!” Regal shouted, slapping Eimose on the back and drawing a few stares from people walking down the hallway with them. “I actually need to talk to you about something else. Meet me in the upper bathroom in thirty minutes.”

Leaving Eimose astounded, Regal ran off to do whatever he needed to do. What the hell was that? Maybe it was something he’d rather not say in public? Could something have happened to Jer and Regal didn’t want to tell him in the hallway? Another shudder ran down Eimose’s body. Had Jer died? Wait, if Jer had died then why did Regal compliment his attempt at a joke? Unless Regal dealt with death through humor, which would make sense considering his entire attitude on life. Oh, gods, Jer was dead.

Although Eimose had been planning on getting something to eat since he’d just finished his time at the lab, his appetite was completely gone now that he’d concluded Jer’s demise. What should he say? How would he comfort Regal? Did Brit know? Of course Brit knew. Did Terra know? Probably not. His thoughts swam and he counted down the seconds until he finally entered the bathroom.

Regal was standing in one of the back stalls, his feet perched on the rim as he sat on the tower, hunched over a screen.

“First of all, I’m really sorry,” Eimose blurted out. “I can’t say I know what it’s like to lose a friend, much less someone like Jer so I don’t kn--”

“Let me stop you there,” Regal said, holding up his hand. “What the fuck are you going on about?”

Eimose was taken aback. “Is Jer ...okay?”

“I just told you less than an hour ago they were. Are you okay man?”

“Uh, yeah. Absolutely fine. Totally good. The best I can be.” Eimose fumbled, face growing hot.

Regal raised his eyebrows. “Are you done?”

Eimose nodded.

“Okay, what I wanted to tell you about is a mission coming up. You remember those vials in your bag?”

“Yeah, the Ambrosia,” Eimose remembered.

“Well, whatever they’re called, they have the potential to turn the tides entirely. We’re talking global environmental change here, not just Wyvern. Whoever created that must have been fucking brilliant because they managed to synthesize artificial photosynthesis in liquid form. If it comes in contact with an organic form it will literally change their respiratory system to breath carbon dioxide and release oxygen. There was also another set of vials mixed in with a similar color that will literally break the bonds between oxygen and nitrogen if it gets released in the air. The UC will be sending out groups of overground teams to find Greenhouse’s old buried bombs and converting them into powerful dispersion devices.” Regal’s eyes shone brightly as he spoke, excitement in every breath. “They’ve already sent out one team to the nearest bomb, but I suspect they’ll start sending out more teams within the week. Brit managed to pull some strings and got you, me, Jer, and Terra on a team, along with some other UC people.”

Eimose was at a loss of words. Could getting out of here be that easy? What the hell kind of strings did Brit pull to get this arrangement? This almost seemed to good to be true, but it was best not to question it. As presumptuous and annoying as Regal was, Eimiose trusted him, and if he said they would be getting out of here, then they would.

“What do you need me to do?” Eimose questioned and he hoped he could contribute something to their master plan.

“Sit tight for now. We haven’t been able to contact Terra yet since they’re keeping a really close eye on her. Oh, and please pay attention to the cameras. You’re lucky Brit was watching you when you stole that gun and scrubbed the footage before anyone saw. Seriously man, pay attention.”

Eimose was left in the bathroom with his jaw slack. Getting reprimanded by Regal was not something he expected would have happened today. He would try his best to make sure it was the last.